


Aglow

by zenstrike



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Emotions, Knight Keith (Voltron), M/M, Madly In Love, Prince Lance (Voltron), Promises, Romance, Secret Relationship, So many emotions, they are madly in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 11:57:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19106629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: A prince and a knight meet under the fairy lights.





	Aglow

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted something soft and romantic and i told y’all i was going to get on the prince lance and knight keith train...so i did, more or less lmao.

    Fairy lights dance in the trees, bouncing the branches and making the wind seem full of stars as it caresses the woods, slipping among the leaves and the grass. There’s magic in these trees, they say—but then there’s magic everywhere, these days, leaking from the sky and the sea and from the roots beneath the earth.

    The sky is dark: the moon rests in the darkness, like a promise.

    But the lights lead the way, with their tinkling laughter and the flashing colours of their wing-breaths. Fairy lights, like after images of the faeries themselves, have a different sort of magic in them: no dust, no glimmering spellcraft or promised transformation, no prophecy. Instead, they offer hope, luck—a beacon of romantic superstition. Fairy lights, it’s said, bless lovers.

    He isn’t a knight tonight: he wears his name, instead, like a cloak, like a gift. It keeps him calm, waiting under the pulsing warmth of the fairy lights, watching them blink out and then back again somewhere higher, somewhere closer. He could reach out and catch them, as Keith. He could put out his hand and feel the lights and climb the trees to gaze out at the midnight sky with its stars and endless dark. He’s loose and free, like this, his tunic light and his hands cool and his sword resting, and almost forgotten, nearby.

    In the daytime, bearing his armour and his title, he walks through these same woods without looking up.

    His prince always announces himself with noise: determined footsteps and the soft sound of his breath; an alert to Keith that whispers _here I am_ and _have you been waiting_?

    It seems that he is always waiting. He holds his breath and counts the moments until they’re together in the dark again; until they can steal a moment in the sunlight, breathing again and parting with a kiss so soft and quick it could break a heart.

    His prince bursts into their clearing, his lips parted and his hands spread as he tears his eyes from the fairy lights above them and finds Keith’s. He smiles. He points up with both hands: “Fairy lights.”

    “Fairy lights,” Keith agrees and reigns in the urge, the need, to rush across the clearing and pull his prince close, just to smell his hair and taste his pulse in his throat. He waits, and waits, and waits.

    “They’re good luck, you know.”

    “I’ve heard that.”

    His prince’s smile becomes a grin, giddy and brighter than all the fairy lights and all the stars. The sight of it sparks hope, and impatience, and Keith rubs his hands against his sides and relishes the heat, the warmth, the bubbling over of love that spreads from his chest to his cheeks to his toes. He wonders if he would fly away, if he moved, if he reached for his prince or if he whispered his name.

    “Keith,” his prince says, coming closer and closer under the lights, with his smile faltering under the weight of something heavier, something better.

    There’s a bird in Keith’s chest, just waiting to spring free and sing to the heavens.

    “Lance,” he says. It feels like a homecoming.

    (He had stumbled, ages and ages ago: _your highness_ ; _my prince_.

    And he had had hands pressed to his cheeks and kisses to his lips and something of a whispered promise: _Lance_ , _my name’s Lance, you know this, you know me_.

    Yes, he had thought a hundred times. _Yes_.)

    Lance all but falls into his arms, like the last step would have taken too much from him. Keith understands that too well, and still feels the burn of his uncertainty and his determination through his legs, rooting him to his spot. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and now clinging to each other and feeling the euphoria of a reunion that burst like stars and fairy lights and so much love in his chest. He sucks in renewed breaths and feels the anxiety of the day and the impatience of his heart melt away and he thinks: _this could be all I need_.

    Yes, this. “Lance,” he whispers again, just to taste his name again.

    Lance’s sigh becomes a garbled, choked sound in his throat, bleeding impatience and pleasure all at once. It’s reassuring. It’s exciting. It makes Keith’s blood simmer and his eyes slide shut like just the intoxicating pleasure of Lance’s presence is too much.

    Maybe it is.

    Keith has been back for days, but they haven’t had a chance to steal away together, not yet; and before that—weeks. Weeks of distance and letters that dripped with longing and his fear that someone, anyone, would open one and see how desperate and afraid and loving he could be: _I miss you, I love you, I feel you in my bones and under my skin, I dream of you_ — Even the rapture of Lance’s unsteadily written replies hadn’t settled him: _the world will stop for us when we’re together again, I keep hearing your voice in the halls_ ; and the earth-shattering: _duty is distance, Keith_.

    What had it meant?

    It had haunted Keith for these past days. Lance had been an inappropriate distraction, through every attendance and meeting in the infrequently used war chamber. He had watched Lance, with his long fingers spread over unfamiliar maps, and he had studied the furrow of Lance’s brow while he waited with fear and excitement for the moment his sharp, strategic mind would be put to use.

    Even home, with Lance just out of reach, Keith dreams of him.

    He dreams of him now, with his eyes closed and Lance warm in his arms and Lane’s breath ghosting his lips. They could stumble and collapse and there would be nothing of Keith but this, when the dust settled, nothing but aching and worry and want.

    In his imagination, he takes his words back a thousand times and replaces them with the promise that this— _this_ —is all he’ll ever need.

    “I missed you,” Lance mumbles, one hand twisted in Keith’s loose hair and the other clutching at the back of Keith’s tunic. The fabric pulls and stretches and Keith feels himself begin to bend and sink and vanish into Lance.

    (Did they know, Keith has wondered on the mornings after Lance has secreted him to his rooms. Could anyone see it, on their skin? Were memories flashing in Keith’s eyes?

    Lance’s hands on his hips and Lance’s ankle under his lips and Lance’s stifled laughter when he had thrown his head back and choked on Keith’s name. Lance’s whispered _please_ and the way Keith’s own voice had died in his throat and Lance’s nails dragging against his back and the bending of their bodies until they had made something inhuman and overheating and wonderful.

    Lance, glaring at the ceiling and biting back another _please_ when Keith slipped away.

    So many memories. Piling up and up and up.)

    “Lance,” he whispers.

    “That’s me.”

    “It is.”

    “It really is.” He presses impossibly closer, holding on impossibly tighter (though he always made impossible seem far away, too distant to see). The solid line of his body is grounding enough to make Keith’s eyes flutter open again, banishing the unraveling memories and worries from his vision until all he can see is Lance’s smile and Lance’s eyes, bright under the gaze of the gathering fairy lights.

    “Yeah,” Keith breathes.

    “Yeah,” Lance agrees. “I’m here. We’re here.”

    “Yeah.”

    “This is real, Keith.”

    Yes, it is. Real and warm—no, hot, so hot in the clearing they had run to so many times before, under the lights with their twinkling promise of magic and luck, soft against Keith’s vision like a blessing. His awareness of his body is almost painful, shockingly sharp like the underlying promise of Lance’s voice and the ache in his secret letters that Keith had felt through his spine, had soaked his skin under his armour while they waited at the border for a war to begin.

    But the world is quiet, now. The stars are still shining. The kingdom is still at peace.

    There are rumours of a princess, and the betrothal of the King and Queen’s youngest child, and the weight of Keith’s own confession had fallen to the pit of a nightmare and he willed his words back again and again and again.

    They could have this, though, for all of their days. If Lance wants it, Keith will give it: dive into it and revel in it and swear himself again and again to his prince until they are both old and grey and Lance is surrounded by his grandchildren, the family that won’t be theirs.

    “What are you thinking about?” Lance asks.

    “You.”

    “What about me?”

    Keith takes a long breath and leans their foreheads together and stares and stares and stares at Lance’s lips. “Kiss me,” he says.

    Lance sucks in a breath, and then another. One of them trembles, or shivers, and it echoes between them. The fairy lights grow brighter and brighter around them, like all the faeries of the woods are gathering to watch them, and leaving their shadows behind to sparkle in the branches.

    “I won’t be able to stop, if I start,” Lance mumbles.

    “Good.”

    He snickers and nudges his nose to Keith’s. There’s barely anything between them, now; no distance at all, or no distance worth seeing. “I have to give you my answer, you know,” Lance continues, a hum in his voice.

    The pit of Keith’s stomach swallows his lungs. He drowns in the air for a moment, wishes he was wearing his armour for a moment, and then he licks his lips and says: “No, you don’t.”

    Lance huffs. “What does _that_ mean?”

    “It means: don’t tell me.”

    “Don’t tell you—”

    Keith grumbles his incoherent displeasure and kisses his prince (his Lance, his love; words and half-finished thoughts whirl about his head), hasty and hard like he fights, like he runs. Lance melts into it and into Keith and they teeter, together, like the woods are shifting under their feet or the sky is caving in towards them—

    Lance pulls back with a disgruntled groan and ignores Keith’s answering scowl. “What did I say,” he grumbles.

    “Doesn’t matter.”

    “‘Doesn’t matter,’” Lance parrots and rolls his eyes. His irritation is showing, making his voice sharp and his frown harsh. Keith waits for him to pull away, slip from Keith’s hold and wander around the clearing and under the fairy lights. But Lance stays, holding on and still pressed close.

    Maybe they’ll stay like this forever. In limbo. Uncertain and certain all at once.

    “Keith,” Lance says, drawing Keith back to him. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

    “I’m not thinking anything.”

    “Liar.”   

    “It doesn’t matter, Lance. Let’s just—” He breaks off.

    _Let’s just_ —what? Could he ask Lance to stay like this, with him, until there was nothing left to hold them up? He thinks of pressing Lance against one of the broad-trunked trees around them, and imagines the sounds Lance would sigh with Keith’s hands on his skin and with his parted lips under Keith’s.

    They are still, breathing together. Lance is still waiting for Keith to finish and Keith is finding—nothing, on the tip of his tongue. Just silence.

    Lance’s hand falls from Keith’s hair and settles heavily on his shoulder. Keith swallows.

    “Did you change your mind?” Lance says finally.

    Keith thinks about saying: _yes_ . It would be so easy, so simple. Lance would nod and press his face to Keith’s neck and sag against Keith’s chest and Keith would hold him and hold him and hold him, relish every moment of it. All the fear would lift from his shoulders and they would carry themselves back to the grounds and to their respective beds and it would be like Keith had said nothing at all. _I love you_ would be all they’d need.

    ( _I love you, I miss you, I think of you always_.

    “I dream about you, all the time,” he had said, here in these woods but without these lights. “I want us, Lance. Really _us_.”

    “What would that even mean?” Lance had said, his voice trembling and his hands flailing as he had paced back and forth. He had clicked his tongue and whirled back to Keith, wild-haired and bright-eyed. “Where would we go? What would we even _do_?”

    “Wherever we want,” he had said, breathed into being like the fantasy it was, only ever half-acknowledged at the back of his mind. “Whatever we want.”

    “My place is here. _Your_ place is here.”

    “Maybe,” Keith had snapped. “I’m starting to think my place is with _you_ , Lance. And yours is with me.”

    Lance had pushed his hands through his hair and breathed out, long and hard, through his teeth and stared straight at the ground. And then he had lifted his head and said: “What are you saying?”

    “You know what I’m saying.”

    “Say it again,” Lance had insisted, and he had sounded so raspy and earnest that it had carried through Keith’s bones and resonated in his chest like so much heat. “Please.”

_Please_.

    “Run away with me,” he had choked out, feeling the words scratch at his throat and against his tongue. “Marry me. Be with me.”

    And Lance had said: “Let me think.”

    “Lance—”

    “Just—let me think.”

    And duty had dragged them apart.

    As it did.)

    “No,” Keith mumbles. “Never.”

    “What’re you afraid of, then?” Lance says, squeezing Keith’s shoulder and leaning in to press their foreheads together again.

    Lance is so warm. He’s bright all on his own. He’s magic in his own right.

    He fills Keith’s life with light and hope.

    “This is enough for me, Lance,” he says. “I have dreams about you but this—us and here and now—this is real and that’s what I want. Reality.”

    “Why won’t you let me answer?” Lance sighs, his eyes drifting shut. “Why are you so impatient?”

    “I’m patient,” Keith lies, a little desperately.

    Lance’s lips twitch.

    He’s hypnotizing, like this, under the lights and with the wind whispering at their ankles and their hair. He’s beautiful. Keith can feel how strong he is, how steady he is, how certain he can be. He wants to kiss Lance and taste his skin and swallow the rejection he is sure is coming. He wants to keep his daydreams of them, just them, safe from prying eyes, safe even from Lance.

    “Reality, huh,” Lance says, opening his eyes.

    “Yeah,” Keith breathes.

    Reality, with its armour and its oaths and Lance’s gold circlet and his place with his siblings. Reality, with its rumors of war and princesses and treaty-sealing engagements. Reality, with its red-lined maps that drag Keith to all corners of the continent so that when he comes back he finds Lance changed and grown and desperate to see him.

    It’s enough.

    It’s enough.

    _It’s enough_ , and he screams this thought to the fairy lights and their vanished faeries.

    “I want to say ‘yes,’” Lance whispers.

    It’s enough, Keith shrieks to his traitorous, hopeful heart.

    “I saw the fairy lights and I thought...well, it looks like a sign, you know what I mean?”

    No, Keith doesn’t. His head spins. His fear chills his skin and makes his hands feel brittle and his eyes burn. It’s enough.

    “I thought about it, even when I probably should’ve been thinking about other, you know, stuff. You and me, wandering the world and finding a place just for us. No more ‘sir’ or ‘prince,’ and we’d come back after a while, when we’d been together so long no one could separate us.”

    It’s enough!

    “We’d find a priest and they’d marry us in secret and we’d see each other every day.” Lance pauses. “It’d be romantic.”

    “Yeah.”

    “It’d be wonderful.”

    “Yeah.”

    Lance kisses him. It lingers, soft and warm. It feels like surrender. It feels like goodbye. He leans back in the loosening circle of Keith’s arms and tightens his grip in Keith’s tunic and smiles, so small Keith can barely see it.

    “It’s okay,” Keith tells him, and his voice doesn’t waver.

    “It’d be wonderful,” Lance says again.

    “It would.”

    “Then let me say ‘yes,’ Keith.”

    The fairy lights blink out and they are suddenly alone in the dark. There’s a rustling in the trees, maybe the wind, and there’s a stuttering breath that almost sounds like Keith.

    “Lance,” he says. Nothing else comes. His eyes adjust slowly. He tries again: “Lance—”

    “Marry me,” Lance says against his lips. “Run away with me.”

    Yes, Keith thinks. Yes—

 

    ***

 

    There’s a glimmering dust settled over the clearing, though no-one sees it. It’s not a place for the daytime, for the work of knights and princes and sunlight. It rests, here, and saves its magic. As magic comes back into the world, old souls wake slowly. The certain steps of lovers are rousing and carry a magic all of its own.

    There’s a smattering of that dust on a note left behind, though Lance hadn’t seen it when’d scribbled it in the dawn light. His niblings come to find him and see the note instead, and pull their hands from it to marvel at the colour on their fingers, at the warmth of it. _I’ll see you soon_ , their uncle promises in his steady handwriting.

    “I miss him already,” Sylvio sighs to his sister.

    “Me too,” Nadia says and folds the letter carefully. “Papa will understand.”

    They nod their agreement to each other.

    There’s a trail of dust, shining and waiting for Shiro to find. His brother’s note is brief and hastily written. The dust makes Shiro sneeze and laugh in a single breath. Under the note: a folded cloak, an abandoned crest. Under Keith’s goodbye: _I’m keeping the sword_.

    Shiro folds up the note and smiles to himself.

 

    ***

 

    They cross three borders before the restlessness fades.

    They cross one more before they find their rings, and then their blessing, and then their whispered wedding.

    “Keith,” Lance whispers in the morning and in the evening.

    “Lance,” Keith says, like a returned offering, in the morning and in the evening.

    When they are ready, the faeries will light their way home. But first—

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i hope you enjoyed


End file.
